Kristi Noem Blames Stephen Miller for Alex Pretti Smear Campaign
The Interior Department appears to have found a new scapegoat for federal agents who brutally killed a U.S. citizen in broad daylight: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would have began blaming Miller for his decision to label Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend, a “domestic terrorist.”
Although Noem’s Cabinet position means she’s ahead of Miller, the ghoulish presidential adviser is an architect of the Trump administration’s murderous immigration policy, and his the power extends to DHS functions.
In a meeting with Donald Trump on Monday — which notably excluded Miller — Noem made sure to emphasize that following the shooting, she followed her instructions from Miller and the president, a source told Axios.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done under the leadership of the president and Stephen,” Noem told a person who relayed her comments to Axios.
Some in the White House accuse Customs and Border Protection of providing Trump administration officials with an incident report offering few details, leading them to believe Pretti had “brandished” a weapon. Once Miller learned that a gun had been involved, he immediately began formulating a narrative in which Pretti intended to massacre federal agents, a source told Axios.
A few minutes after the EDS issued a statement On Saturday, Miller claimed Pretti was an “armed suspect” who “violently resisted” federal agents’ attempts to disarm him. published the baseless claim that Pretti was a “potential assassin” who attempted to murder federal law enforcement officers. Noem then repeated this language during her press conference later in the day.
Footage of the arrest indicated that federal agents did not know Pretti was armed when they began beating him and that Pretti was already unarmed with his arms pinned above his head when he was shot at least 10 times.
It seems Miller is hoping to walk away from his insensitive lies, and he suddenly changed his story on the murder of Alex Pretti after Trump’s inner circle started to attack him.
